First off, please note that from now on and for the foreseeable future, the final selection of raid participants will be made by the raid leader in order to secure an optimum balance. This means that signup priority may not always be respected - so if you are interested in a particular raid, always sign up, even if it appears to be fully subscribed.
Secondly, we could use a Warden and another Hunter raiding regularly. If you have such an alt who has reached l.60, we will help them gain the necessary radiance as quickly as possible.
Thirdly, we will be making our first attempt on Dar Narbugud towards the end of August - stay tuned!

Codemasters just finished installing book 8 patch 1, with fixed Hardmodes for Hall of Mirrors, Hall of Crafting and Waterwheels instances, new Lorien recipes, 2nd age craftable legendaries and a fixed Carn DÃ»m!

Yes you read it right, the raid of TWA and friends on the Vile Maw last night was finally a succes! Congratulations to Thoronthor, Palliric, Shadowen, Lakeborn, Freolyn, Ferdoc, Nalireth, Kairos, Ertana, Baradien, Droroin and Belegwe and thanks to everyone who helped to reach this milestone. The art is courtesy of Ferdoc.

A Guide to the Watcher raid is being compiled and can be accessed under "Tactics & Guides" here: http://www.thewesternalliance.org/index....pic=3949.0. This is an ongoing guide, subject to modification. Everybody currently raiding or planning to raid the Vile Maw please read this. Comments and corrections are more than welcome, they are mandatory. If you can add anything peculiarly relevant to your class, please do so on that thread (not here); the guide will be modified accordingly.

Just as a reminder: the Kinship banker is Dalewaru (Ingaras' alt), to whom any unwanted crafting materials (all levels) as well as items such as class books and book pages should be posted in-game. If you need anything along these lines, send him an ingame message or a forum PM.

While I was fixing the Youtube forum code (aye, I broke it... Lucky nobody noticed it ), I found out how the codes actually work, so I decided to take a little detour and add lorebook links. As a result you can boast about your [skill]Improved Swift Bow[/skill] that critted for 1k. Ofcourse it also has more useful links, like comparing [armour]Jacket of the Great Bow[/armour] to [armour]Trapsetter's Jacket[/armour].

How to do it? Search for the item you'd like to link in the Lorebook and if it says Item:Something you can link it useing
[nobbc][item]Something[/item][/nobbc], if it says Armour:Something use [nobbc][armour]Something[/armour][/nobbc] etc.

I noticed tonight that not everyone reads the MotD, so I'll post it here as well: We have a new TeamSpeak server! The details can be found in this thread on the member forums. Also you can connect using the button on the TeamSpeak 'block' on the front page, where you just have to enter a nickname and the password.

What's new?
As you might have noticed we now have a decent front page that allows posting news items and in the future might get some information articles. Also there are 'blocks' on the sides containing all kinds of useful tools while browsing the site. Next to that the kinship membertool and the raid scheduler have been replaced by a home made integrated event calendar and character list. You now can manage your own characters on the memberlist and that information will be used when signing up for raids and other events. The events calendar is similar to the old raid scheduler, but automatically sorts out signups. If you sign up as 2nd minstrel for example, you will automatically be moved to a 'any-class' space. I hope you enjoy it and if you encounter any issues or have requests, don't be afraid to open a topic in the new Tech Corner! An additional word of warning when editting events: the times used are your forum times, so have a good look at the current time in the top right. If needed you can adjust your time offset in your profile.

The Western Alliance, or TWA for short, is an online gaming community, created in 2007 during the launch of the Lord of the Rings Online. Since then our Kinship's focus has spread further afield, and we welcome all players of games old and new into our family.

We consist of a largely European-based mature member group with ages ranging from 16 to 60. We encourage silliness, laughter and mutual respect.